Although Canon has flooded the market with numerous ultracompacts, compacts, and digital SLRs, the company sells just one superzoom digital camera: the 6-megapixel PowerShot S3 IS, this year's update to last year's 5MP PowerShot S2 IS. Although not a complete overhaul, the many small improvements made to the S3 IS make it a very desirable superzoom. But at $499.95, these tweaks don't justify the price premium.

Aside from upping the megapixels, the S3 has a (slightly) larger 2-inch LCD screen than the S2 and offers consumers a choice of either gray or black finish. Canon also raised the top ISO to 800, which is important for shooting in low-light situations. The company also added some very cool features, including the ability to shoot video and simultaneously capture still images at full resolution.

I found that the S3 had less shutter lag and better image sharpness that the current Editors' Choice, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. Like the FZ7, the S3 IS has a 12X optical zoom with a 6mm-to-72mm range (equivalent to a 35mm lens with a 36mm-to-432mm zoom). The corresponding maximum f-stops are f/2.7 to f/3.5. I was also impressed with the S3's robust burst mode. Some cameras can handle only a few frames before the buffer is filled, but the S3 captured several dozen frames. In my testing, I was able to shoot 2 frames per second for more than 15 seconds.

The video on this camera lets you use the 12X optical zoom. Unlike other superzooms, such as the Panasonic TZ1, the S3 IS did a good job of zooming in and out without picking up the noise of the motor grinding. It also adjusted quite well to indoor and outdoor lighting and to refocusing after zooming. The video files are stored as motion JPEG .AVI files at VGA (640-by-480) at 30 fps. The sound was also quite good. And you can snap a photo as well during filming. When compared with two other recent compact superzoomsthe TZ1 and Kodak EasyShare V610the video quality on the S3 IS was better. The S3 IS has a more powerful zoom than the V610, and the video has more clarity and less purple fringing than the TZ1.

The S3 IS performed quite well on my lab tests. The daylight shots revealed hardly any noise and were just a touch cleaner than the FZ7's. On both the daylight and flash shots, there was very good color accuracy and fidelity. Flash and daylight exposures were quite good, but I found more purple fringing with the S3's images than in the FZ7's. Using the camera's auto-flash mode, shots on the FZ7 were brighter than the S3 IS's shots, which were a bit underexposed. The flash shots also revealed more noise than the daylight shot or what the FZ7 displayed.

Resolution averaged 1,550 lines, which is near the top of the range for a 6MP camera and slightly higher than the FZ7, which averaged 1,500 lines. The S3 IS boots up in 2.4 seconds, which is quick, beating the FZ7 by almost a second. Sadly, the 4.4-second recycle time is significantly slower than the FZ7's recycle time of 1.6 seconds. I was happy to see that the Canon S3 IS has hardly any shutter lag.

The lack of barrel distortion, especially on a superzoom, is impressive. Because of the wide zoom range12X opticalyou'd expect at least some on the wide-angle end of the zoom range, but I saw almost none. There was also no noticeable pincushion distortion at the telephoto end.

Within the Canon system, IS stands for image stabilization, which can be turned on to avoid blurry shots when you've zoomed in to its maximum zoom range. The S3 IS has three types of IS: continuous, panning, and shoot-only. In both low and bright light, all three seemed to do the job.

In my opinion, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS is neck-and-neck with the current budget superzoom EC, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. But the FZ7 is still about $100 cheaper, keeping it a better choice. That said, the S3 IS is a great all-around compact superzoom.

Terry Sullivan is a writer, photographer and artist, who has worked in the photo industry for nearly a decade. In 1998, Terry was hired by Photo District News, a monthly magazine for professional photographers, as...

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